The new look Lady Eagles opened the season with three games at the St. James Tip Off Classic, winning one of the three contests. ACA returns only one starter from last year’s squad and only three current players saw significant time last year. The Eagles defeated Prattville and lost to Pell City and Loachapoaka over the two day event.
ACA opened the season Friday afternoon with a 29-56 loss to Pell City. The Lady Eagles looked nervous to start the game and fell behind early as the Lady Panthers scored the first 18 points of the game. For the remainder of the game, Pell City only outscored ACA 38-29, but the Eagles had already dug too deep a hole for themselves. Rose Costanza scored the first bucket of the season midway through the first quarter to start the scoring for the Lady Eagles. Michaelyn Manning led the offense with ten points and four rebounds. Sarah Johnson added seven points with three rebounds while Rose Costanza had six points and four rebounds.
On Saturday morning, game two of the weekend against Prattville had an unusual start as ACA was assessed a technical foul for a scorebook violation. The Lady Lions hit one of the two free throws to start play with a 1-0 iead. With two minutes left to go in the first quarter, ACA turned up the heat on defense by pressing Prattville and scored the final nine points of the period. During the run, Katie Chappell scored a basket and made her free throw to complete a three point play that gave ACA an 11-10 lead. The Eagles would not trail for the rest of the contest and won by a sore of 53-42. Michaelyn Manning and Sarah Johnson led the offense as Manning scored 14 points and Johnson had 13 points with seven rebounds, six assists and six steals. Katie Chappell added nine points and six rebounds.
In the final game of the weekend, ACA opened the game with cold shooting, as they missed their first 14 shots of the game. Despite the struggle to score the ball, the Eagles only trailed Loachapoaka 2-7 at the end of the first quarter. Both offenses scuffled on the afternoon as each team shot less than 25% from the field and combined for just 44 points, as the Indians prevailed 30-14. Michaelyn Manning had four points to lead the Eagle offense while Rose Costanza and Mary Hall each had three points.